Broadband improvements show 'Neilsen's Law'

According to a report from the FTTH Council Europe, improvements in broadband connectivity speeds are having a direct impact on consumer bandwidth usage, with demand per broadband home growing at almost 20 per cent per annum over the last 5 years. The research, undertaken with Ventura Team, is believed to be the first of its kind to directly test the hypothesis of Nielsen's Law of Internet bandwidth against patterns of fibre and ADSL broadband usage in Europe.

Joeri Van Bogaert, president of the FTTH Council Europe, explains, “Everyone is familiar with Moore's Law for Computing, and Nielsen's Law takes a similar approach to measuring Internet bandwidth. Whilst Moore sees computing power grow 60 per cent annually, Nielsen states that the bandwidth available to a high end user grows at 50 per cent per year. For the first time, we wanted to find out if this increase in available speed is true and is related to an increase in consumer demand and usage.”

The FTTH Council Europe report states that European broadband speeds are rising at 50 per cent+ per annum, high end broadband usage per home is growing at 20 per cent per annum and FTTH broadband homes drive 3x more traffic than ADSL in Europe.